Rutgers, Early Girl, Better Boy, Celebrity, Sweet Million (cherry), Jet Star, Supersonic, and Roma are all common varieties and considered by most to be dependable and easy to grow.

Not personally recommending all of them by any means, but they are "beginner friendly".

Per a recent survey by Mother Earth News, FWIIW, the top 5 popular are Brandywine, Early Girl, Better Boy, Beefsteak, and Cherokee Purple.

Dave

Celebrity, Early Girl, most cherries, and BHN-444 is a tank but I've not talked to anyone that actually liked the fruit.

Are you talking about the one variety that I would be foolish not to save room for in my garden every year just because it always produces well and tastes good when all the other varieties fail? IMO Park's Whopper. I'm sure there are other varieties that fit this description also but when you find something that works this good there's not much sense in looking for something better.

I normally plant 8 to 10 varieties, some hybrids, some heirlooms. I usually try something new every year, but I always put in a half dozen or so Celebrities just to make sure I have some maters one way or another. Most hybrid cherries will do a great job for a beginner, also. I usually get sick of picking the dumb little things long before they quit producing.

My Beam's Yellow Pear seems to be unkillable. I haven't had the tomatoes off of it yet. They could be inedible, just to laugh in my face!
I'm sure I'll figure out a recipe to use them in, sauce or salsa or whatever.

Tell 'em (what ever isn't being bought )that those are the hottest items. raise only those prices ,tell them they are rare, works, like I had to germinate more cuz evry 1 bought them ,you know lie

I would say Sweet 100 is pretty fool proof. I was able to grow it in a spot that has just under 6 hours of sun in weather that brought a lot of rain and it tastes great. I'll be growing it again this year and probally for many years to come.

Big Beef

Big beef for a great tomato, and maybe Parks whopper too.
Celebrity of course, its the old stand by.
If they have bad conditions, cold temps, no water, etc. Give them a stupice, its much like a weed.

Hard to screw up most of the popular hybrids. Their popularity is well earned. Perhaps not garnered by taste, but by reliability and successes. Even an average home grown tomato tastes better than a store bought!

Good choices already mentioned, but add my vote for a few of the ones mention.

Better Boy
Early Girl
Big Beef
Celebrity
Roma VF
Brandyboy

With the exception of Brandyboy, the list almost elicits a yawn. These are all varieties I plant every year, without fail, and they never disappoint.

I would vote for hybrid determinates, such as Better Bush and Small Fry. Novices invariably fail to meet the demanding staking, caging, and pruning requirements of vigorous plants like a Brandywine. Even if they do nothing, they should get a nice harvest with varieties like these. Misterbaby.

Siletz is a good beginner tomato- it is parthenocarpic so it can set fruit without being pollinated, which means it can do so in cold, humid, and other less than ideal conditions. It is very early, and is a determinate that gets to be about 3 ft tall, but the tomatoes are often beefsteak sized, and the ones we planted last year probably gave an average of around 25-30 fruit (some small) each. They do tend to produce a lot of fruit all at once, but it seemed like they still had some staggering of ripe fruit and did not completely stop growing until late in the season.Some of them were still even going fairly strong into the fall in cool weather.

A lot of people think the taste is just so-so, but everyone who tried ours thought they were great... I guess it's good by the average person's standards.

It's not exactly an heirloom, though, but it is open-pollinated, one of those vegetable breeds developed by Dr. Jim Bagget at Oregon State U.

If you're looking for an heirloom to add to your list, I can recommend Break O' Day, a commercial open-pollinated variety from the early thirties. It's productive, reliable and tasty.
It doesn't have out-of-this world, OMG flavor, but it's savory and what most people expect from a tomato. I'm growing it again this year. My father, notorious for neglecting his plants, grew a huge and productive specimen last year. He asked me to start another for him this spring.

The way I see it the most foolproof varieties are the ones that do best in a person's garden b'c climates are different, soils are different, weather is different, the way folks grow tomatoes is different, the amendments they use are different and from the responses already given in this thread it's easy to see that there is NO consensus, which just reinforces the fact, for me at least, that there are too many uncontrolled variables.

So my best advice is to grow what interests someone and make conclusions that way.

Your own focus is on what might sell in your owm local area and if it were me I think I'd scout out the possible farm stands, the nurseries and all else to find out what the folks want. When it comes to selling plants off Craigs list I don't think that one can be solved b'c you have no way of knowing where your possible costumers are in terms of what might do best in that area when you select the varieties you're going to grow out.

I think it's a matter of growing out MANY different varieties for several years such that you get more experience, you said you had little, and then being able to advise folks about the varieties you offer.

You might take a look at the set up Darrel Jones has at selectedplants.com and Darrel does help potential customers make decisions.

Carolyn, who doesn't want to sound like a downer, I encourage you to keep exploring varieties and ways of selling your plants, but experience is the key and I think the only way you get that is to grow many varieties. If you want to sell nationally then that's different from what you might choose for your own garden as I see it.

Carolyn, I do not have any ambitions of being a national seller. All I am trying to do is partially subsidize the $350 I have invested in my tomato seedling setup, actually $390 now because I just order $40 more worth of seeds from Hazzards. I figure my variable costs at about 65 cents per plant just for the pot, very expensive Pro-Mix seed starting mix, and the seed, taking into account not all seeds sprout. Now that I found Hazzards my per seed cost will go down, but I have to buy packets of seed that cost anywhere from $4.35 to $9.65 for a pack of 250 seeds to do it, plus shipping. Then I have to spread the $200 cost of my wire rack and 14 fluorescent lights I use, actually it will be more because I just bought 7 more lights because I am running out of growing space. So my goal for this year would be to sell at least $150 worth of plants which would at least pay for the Pro-Mix and seeds. Next year if I keep doing this my seed costs will be much lower because I now will have enough seeds to last for the next five years assuming the germination rate doesn't drop too much.
Actually I keep thinking of more costs I forgot to add in. $8.80 for a bag of pumice, $2 for a bale of peat moss I got off the clearance rack, the gas to go buy all this stuff, the electricity to run my lights, about 15 plastic trays and containers, watering cans, $8,87 for Miracle-Gro, plant markers, barrels and garbage cans to store all the seed starting and transplant potting soil in. Actually come to think about it I probably have $500 directly or indirectly invested in seed starting equipment and supplies. If I can't sell enough plants to subsidize at least part of this I guess my own tomatoes will end up costing ten dollars each for big ones and a dollar apiece for cherries.

I really like to grow a Goliath Hybrid among my Heirlooms. Consistent and delicious.

Californian, I thought you were selling nationally via Craig's list, but I don't know anything about the ads put on that site so maybe I misunderstood.

I fully understand trying to cover costs as best you can. Here at home I could care less what I spend b'c everything grown here, fruits, vegetables, perennials, annuals, shrubs, is primatily for me, but when it comes to my covering the costs associated with my SSE listings that's a different matter entirely.

However, I don't SSE list varieties to make money, I list to share varieties, same as the free seed offer I do elsewhere each year where this year there were about 80 participants and I packed and sent out about 400 packs of tomato seed. The seed offer was by SASE but SSE members are not required to send anything for postage. And the request price I ask is way below the SSE suggested request price b'c as I see it almost all of us who list varieties are amateurs and are not commercial growers.

Carolyn